


When the fire turned into ice

by goldtracing



Series: the future is a fickle thing, so is the past [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Darth Vader, Cunning Darth Vader, Deception, Everything goes sideways, Gen, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:07:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24661282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldtracing/pseuds/goldtracing
Summary: Vader isn’t Anakin and that is why Sidious’ plan backfires on him.
Relationships: Sheev Palpatine & Anakin Skywalker, Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious & Darth Vader, darth vader & darth sidious
Series: the future is a fickle thing, so is the past [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815403
Comments: 4
Kudos: 98





	When the fire turned into ice

Vader isn’t Anakin – Darth Sidious has made sure of that.

Years ago, Senator Palpatine had been on that landing platform to greet a naïve queen with a sharp mind and the desperation that came with responsibility. Following Padme Amidala was a young boy flanked by Jedi, a child with star-lit eyes and a loyalty that would one day take the galaxy’s breath away.

The Force had been bright as it had danced around the child who was a new star born out of a supernova. It was a boy that had already seen hardship and suffering and will see much, much more in his lifetime, the Dark whispered in its palanquin’s ear.

From that moment on, Sheev Palpatine had been enticed by the young prodigy and had vowed to make him his.

As time on passed on, the Sith had watched Anakin Skywalker. He had observed how the Chosen One had become infatuated with a child monarch and talked about freeing slaves and bringing justice at mealtimes and learn the ways of the ‘sabre when the sun was setting. The politician had noted how the boy was out of his depth in an Order that placed him on a pedestal due to a prophecy and belittled him for his upbringing.

( _He is just a slave to his emotions.)_

_(You are not ready, my young Padawan, you are not at peace.)_

Anakin had always held selfless morality and self-righteous rage because life had never been easy on him, and the Chancellor had used that to his advantage. Cautiously, the Sith had lured his victim in with honeyed words and a soft voice, had listened to the boy when nobody else had and had guided him to his fall from grace.

_(Have I ever held you back. No, you deserve to reach your full potential. You deserve more than an ordinary Jedi. You deserve a life of significance)_

It had worked wonderfully. Dripping sickly sweet poison in his ears and sowing contagion in his roots, Skywalker had started to grow bent and backwards in subtle ways and all the efforts of Padme and Obi-wan and Ahsoka Tano couldn’t undo the damage.

Admitted, they had slowed down an inevitable process and for that alone they deserved Palpatine’s respect. But life is never about who deserves what and they lost, and Sidious shed his mask and revelled in his triumph.

Secretly he had hoped to gloat about his victory and corrupting the Jedi Chosen One to Yoda, in order to pour salt in fresh wounds, yet the latter had been as uncooperative to his schemes in the end. It didn’t matter anyway in the long run, what mattered was that he had the galaxy in the palm of his hand.

Anakin had always been fiery in his conviction with a white-hot rage that burned as fiercely as the centre of a star. It was what made a formidable warrior foolish, sloppy, weak. Skywalker had burned in his own flame, limbs chopped off and passed a painful baptism of fire when the Sith Lord found his ruined masterpiece.

Sidious could have been considerate. But life is conflict, it is violent and ruthless and the Sith even more so.

The master had gone ahead to spite his student, wrap him in chains and imprison him in a mobile mausoleum and hold him on a leash to ensure that Darth Vader would never be free again.

Yet Vader wasn’t Anakin and that was why matters were programmed to go sideways from the beginning.

More than a Jedi had died on that lava bank that night.

Scorching anger had perished to be replaced by ice-cold wrath, the impulsiveness of a man that was still a child despite war and duty by razor sharp calculation. Anakin Skywalker had been devoured by his own shadow, all the aspects of himself that he had repressed due to shame and conviction now had taken control of a devasted mind and a broken body.

Where there was once fire, there is now ice flowing through nerves and blood vessels that end in metal. So, in between grief and apathy, the lust for vengeance had settled to begin an unstoppable collision course.

Darth Vader is as cold as the void between the stars, as frigid as the corpse of Padme Amidala when she was laid to rest and it delights his Master. The former is a shadow that treats the whims of the latter as orders and breaths down his subordinate’s necks and strangles people with the Force like he is practising something.

( _I will not tolerate your incompetence)_

He is all iron will and a juggernaut that acts as a pillar for a never-ending Empire. It’s just such a pity that Vader knows this.

Because Vader isn’t Anakin and Sidious wouldn’t even have time to regret it.

Skywalker had always been a slave – to a Rodian, to his past, to the expectations of others, to his emotions. While determining that his past self was weak and methodically discarding all his former weaknesses, Lord Vader concludes that he doesn’t want to bow to anyone anymore, least of all a man he once considered a mentor and friend.

So, he plots, he schemes, and he waits because the Dark is patient.

Far away, a young boy dreams of a father with a warm heart that left the desert planet that he also yearns to leave. Close by, a young girl sees the sad but beautiful face of her mother in her mind’s eye and wonders what caused her misery. Yet Vader isn’t Anakin who looked reality in the eye just to misinterpret and ignore it, so he doesn’t need to meet either of them to wake him up to the fate he almost doomed himself to.

Vader is a master tactician – it stems from his Jedi days where he was too creative, too innovative for the High Council with his unorthodox plans. Somehow, he has always managed to make things work so he would be damned if he didn’t achieve his freedom.

In his master’s absence, the younger Sith spins a spider’s web across the galaxy, a complex network of which he is the head of. He listens, he watches and gathers support because he is much more benevolent than the Emperor and doesn’t see people as commodities, just useless and hindering at worst. And so, the master plan ripens.

Darth Sidious only realizes that it is to late, that he has been hoodwinked when it is too late. Years he has spent drunk on power and intoxicated on the fine wine of the Dark-Side that he has lost touch with reality. It is painfully when he is then bum rushed by it.

He doesn’t see it coming because he is too enamoured with his delusion of being a god and because of the picture-perfect darkness that cocoons his apprentice. It’s too late to escape the trap the latter lured him in because Vader had learned from all his mistakes and veiled all his actions under a guise of rash impulsiveness and a sandstorm of emotions that had once been Anakin Skywalker.

Indeed, the Emperor laughed when the blue tinted hologram announced that he was about to die, because the best plan his right-hand could come up with would be to ram him through the gut with a lightsabre.

_(My dear friend, did you really think you could trick me?)_

He was wrong, because Vader isn’t Anakin and had seen through his ploys and constructed is own. Because the monster he had created was much more cunning and because the way of the Sith was that somebody always had to meet their maker. In midst of quiet moments and loud thoughts Lord Vader had realized the Sith Code never stated how the master should be killed. Besides, hadn’t Darth Sidious killed his own Master in the most dishonourable way?

_(You’ll see how much of a trick this is when you join the Force.)_

Sheev Palpatine sits in a small ship with a sabotaged hyperdrive and leaking air supply when Darth Vader comes to boast about his success and delivers a monologue that is so cliché and yet it is fitting, because Vader is the sort of genius that needs to have an audience and have his hard work acknowledged and applauded

It is when the ex-student manipulates the Force to activate the hyperdrive to send him off to forever careen through the glitch between realities with no hope of salvation that the ex-master comprehends that he has made the gravest mistake of his career, because Vader isn’t Anakin in all the best ways possible.

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when inspiration suddenly hits me. Before you leave there is something you should do…  
> …leave a comment!


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